


After the Storm

by Shayvaalski



Series: Outsong [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Epilogue, Established Relationship, Guns, Homecoming, M/M, Minor Violence, Post Reichenbach, Series, Slashy, conclusion, outsong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-26
Updated: 2012-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-02 13:51:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayvaalski/pseuds/Shayvaalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian Moran goes home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Storm

_On my knees and out of luck,_

_I look up._

 

The text that wakes Sebastian leaves John asleep. Seb untangles himself gently, sliding the other man's knee off his hips, pulling his arm out from beneath John's neck, and sits up. It’s very early, the light outside their window a dull gray, and he spends a moment groping for the phone. It's fallen off the bed during the night, he's got to stop keeping it under the pillow--there. 

_He’s not dead. He’ll walk in your door at 2pm today. Now come home. xo JM._

Seb sits with his forearms resting against his drawn-up knees, body hollowed around itself. He knows what John would do in his situation but denial seems pointless; he knows the number, after all, and it sounds like him. There’s no point in replying, because his boss already knows what Seb is going to do.

He looks over at John, heavy sleeper, simple man, and puts a hand against the hard muscles of his injured shoulder. Moriarty is back. Sherlock is on his way.

And Seb is leaving.

 

‘Home’ is not always the same place. In the old days, the days before St. Bart’s, Jim had kept a string of flats all across London, moving from one to the other with no discernible pattern, so that Seb periodically came back from shopping to the door hanging open and all Jim's suits gone. It had been up to Sebastian to gather up anything else they couldn't live without, hunt down Moriarty by a combination of logic and guesswork and instinct. 

But today he does not have to. Seb knows where Jim is, where he has to be, and the man draws him like iron filings to a magnet, moving at a dog-trot through the quiet streets. He hasn't been back to his old flat for a year now but the key is burning Seb’s palm as he comes up the road, it has not left his pocket in all this time, the last tenuous connection to Jim in a world all taken up by John.

The door to the building is locked, but the door to his flat is not. Seb rests his fingertips against the wood and leans his forehead against its solidity; once inside there will be no more choices, only the uncomplicated bowing of his neck under the heaviness of Jim's hand, the relief of having the way laid out for him. His fingers curl around the doorknob but Seb does not move. (You’re mine, tiger, says Jim the first night they spend together, and rakes his nails down Sebastian's back, and the marks do not fade for hours. All mine.)

Moriarty is standing at the window. He is perhaps a little thinner, his cheeks a touch hollower, but otherwise he is just as Seb remembers him, lean and immaculate and tense in every muscle, hands in his pockets, his face in profile against the afternoon light. Sebastian cannot take his eyes off him, and he cannot speak.

“Sebby,” says Jim, without turning, and Seb feels the word all through his blood and bones, and were he a lesser man he might have groaned with the sound of it. “Come _here_ , Sebby.”

And then he does turn, and Seb’s body is moving forward of its own volition, drawn by eyes the color of a pit too deep for sun to pierce. “Sit,” says Jim, and the only intact piece of furniture in the whole destroyed flat is Jim’s chair, which he could not bring himself to touch even in the bad two weeks right after, so Seb drops to his knees in front of Moriarty, and Jim laughs. 

“Good boy.” Jim fingers just barely brush Seb’s jaw, and Sebastian bites back the noise he wants to make, swallows it down. The other man begins to circle him, sharklike, and his voice is light and cruel. “Was it _hard_ , Sebby, leaving the good doctor? Did he weep? Or, oh--you didn't even _say_ , did you. Cold of you, Bastian, very cold, but then, that's you all _over,_ isn't it?” Jim's hand skims over his shoulders and Seb shudders, and Moriarty's voice drops down the octave, pleased. “You _did_ miss me, didn’t you, tiger. Shame I won’t be staying. Shame you can’t follow.” There is a noise Sebastian knows, and he sags a little with the knowledge, but it is enough, that it is Jim's hand that will hold the gun, and he is not afraid. “You've been a good dog, Sebby,” says Jim, appearing in front of him again, the Browning hanging down by his left leg. “But you’re getting long in the tooth, and it’s about time you were put down.” The safety clicks off and Jim raises his arm: Seb’s heart stutters a little, then steadies. “Anything you want to say, Sebby, baby?”

Silence, and the sunlight on his face, Jim so close, and Seb reaches out and lifts the barrel of the gun another few inches so that it rests against his temple, soft as a kiss. Seb’s fingers are loosely curled around Jim's wrist, and he can feel the way the tendons begin to tense in readiness.

“I’m glad you’re home, boss.” Seb’s voice is quiet, and even, and he lifts his wet-rock eyes to meet Jim’s. 

“I know,” says Jim, and pulls the trigger. 

\--and there is nothing but the click of the hammer on an empty chamber, and “You fucking _bastard_ ” hisses Seb, and Jim begins to laugh like he has just gotten the best joke in the world and Seb is slamming into him, the floor rising up to meet them exactly the way it always does, the gun skidding into a corner and Seb’s hands tangled into Jim's hair, Jim's fingers hard against Seb’s neck like no time at all has passed.

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics and title taken from "After the Storm" by Mumford and Sons. This is the Epilogue to the Outsong series.


End file.
